reign

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See also: Reign

English[edit]

Alternative forms[edit]

Etymology[edit]

From Middle English regnen, borrowed from Old French regner, from the Latin verb rēgnō, and the noun regnum

Pronunciation[edit]

Noun[edit]

reign (plural reigns)

  1. The exercise of sovereign power.
    England prospered under Elizabeth I's reign.
    • Prior
      Saturn's sons received the threefold reign / Of heaven, of ocean, and deep hell beneath.
  2. The period during which a monarch rules.
    The reign of Victoria was a long one.
  3. The territory or sphere over which a kingdom; empire; realm; dominion, etc. is ruled.
    (Can we find and add a quotation of Edmund Spenser to this entry?)

Translations[edit]

The translations below need to be checked and inserted above into the appropriate translation tables, removing any numbers. Numbers do not necessarily match those in definitions. See instructions at Wiktionary:Entry layout#Translations.
Translations to be checked

Verb[edit]

reign (third-person singular simple present reigns, present participle reigning, simple past and past participle reigned)

  1. (intransitive) To exercise sovereign power, to rule as a monarch.
    He reigned in an autocratic manner.
  2. (transitive, rare, nonstandard) To reign over (a country)
  3. To be the winner of the most recent iteration of a competition.
  4. To be a dominant quality of a place or situation; to prevail, predominate, rule.
    • 2007, Richard Bawden, “Redesigning Animal Agriculture: a Systemic Perspective”, in David L. Swain, Ed Charmley, John Steel, Shaun Coffey, editors, Redesigning Animal Agriculture: The Challenge of the 21st Century‎[1], CABI, page 1:
      Unfortunately – and ironically – the word ‘system’ itself is used in such a wide variety of contexts within animal science, as indeed it is in virtually every domain of human activity, that confusion reigns about what a systems-oriented research programme actually looks like and what systems-oriented animal scientists actually do.

Translations[edit]

Anagrams[edit]

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